BIOGRAPHY

Irish-Canadian mezzo soprano, Wallis Giunta, is a 2025 International Opera Awards nominee for their “Readers’ Award”, and has been praised by OPERA NEWS for her “delectably rich, silver-toned mezzo-soprano” with her performance as Mozart’s Sesto for the Canadian Opera Company celebrated as “a triumph…remarkable in its combination of intelligence and beauty”. In 2018 she was named both “Young Singer of the Year” at the International Opera Awards, and “Young Artist of the Year” by The Arts Desk. Wallis made debuts in the 2024/2025 season at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Dinah in Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti, at Teatro alla Scala as Lilian Holiday in Weill’s Happy End, at the Kölner Philharmonie in concert with Ensemble Modern in Weill’s Die Sieben Todsünden. In 2025/2026, she makes debuts at the Hungarian State Opera in concert, with the Colorado Symphony in Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang, returns to the Canadian Opera Company orchestra in concert, and adds the title role in Carmen to her repertoire at the Vienna Volksoper , where she will also debut the role of Muse/Niklausse in a new production of Les Contes D’Hoffmann in June of 2026.

Wallis made an acclaimed debut in the 2023/2024 season at Carnegie Hall  in her signature role of Anna I in Die Sieben Todsünden with Ensemble Modern, and appeared in the same work with the Munich Chamber Orchestra, along with debuts at the Wiener Symphoniker in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, at Opéra de Lausanne  as Mozart’s Dorabella, and at the Maison Symphonique in Montreal as Carmen. She also debuted at the Landestheater Linz as Cherubino, at the Staatstheater Darmstadt as the Gymnasiast in Berg’s Lulu, and at the Opèra Comique in Paris reprising the role of Dodo in Breaking the Waves by Missy Mazzoli & Royce Vavrek. She starred at the Vienna Volksoper as the title role in the Austrian premiere of The Gospel According to the Other Mary by John Adams & Peter Sellars, and debuted at the Komische Oper Berlin in concert performing Berio’s Folk Songs.

Previous seasons have seen Wallis debut as the title role in Rossini’s Cenerentola with Opéra national de Montpellier, Oper Leipzig, The Royal Swedish Opera, Seattle Opera, the Vienna Volksoper and Opera North. She is often sought after as an interpreter of early music, joining the Philharmonia Baroque as Tigrane in Händel’s Radamisto, the Concentus Musicus Wien as the title role in Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas, and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein as Bradmante in Händel’s Alcina, with the latter two roles also taking her to Toronto, with Opera Atelier. She has performed in concert at the Sydney Opera House, and with the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony, the Hungarian State Opera, the Colorado Symphony, and the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, among many others. She is also a regular guest at the BBC Proms Festival at Royal Albert Hall, performing as the Queen of Sheba in Händel’s Solomon with the BBC Symphony, in a concert program celebrating Leonard Bernstein for his centenary year, as well as in recital singing the works of Argentinian composer, Ariel Ramirez, with guitarist Sean Shibe.

While trained in the traditional operatic style, Wallis has always had an adventurous artistic soul. In 2018, Wallis gave a TEDx Talk exploring artistic versatility in the operatic career, entitled “Singing out of the Box”, and has given a masterclass at Cambridge in partnership with The King’s Singers on the same topic, which is close to her heart. As a passionate interpreter of the works of Kurt Weill, she has joined the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla, Opera North, Dacamera Houston and the Oregon Music Festival as Anna I in productions of Die Sieben Todsünden, and has also sung the title role in Maria de Buenos Aires with Opera de Lyon and Les Nuits de Fourvière. She debuted at The Metropolitan Opera in Rigoletto and returned in their Merry Widow, while making her role debuts at the Canadian Opera Company as Mozart’s Sesto in La Clemenza di Tito, and as Dorabella in Cosí dan tutte. She has sung the title role in Der Rosenkavalier, along with Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia for Oper Leipzig and The Dallas Opera, and made her role debut as Dodo in the acclaimed 2019 Scottish Opera production of Breaking the Waves at both the Edinburgh and Adelaide Festivals.

In June 2014, she recorded her first album with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin (NAXOS), of a new work, Silent Film Heroines, by American composer, William Perry. Wallis also debuted in 2014 with Toronto’s 21C Music Festival in Louis Andriessen’s one-woman-opera, Anaïs Nin. She has debuted with Teatro Communale di Bolzano, Opera Atelier, the Vienna Volksoper, the Grange Festival, The Barbican, Oper Leipzig and Fort Worth Opera as Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, with Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and Le Théâtre du Châtelet as Tiffany in “I was Looking at the Ceiling and then I Saw the Sky (Adams/Sellars), at Oper Leipzig as the title role in Carmen and at Oper Frankfurt as Mercedes, at the Vienna Volksoper as Hänsel in Hänsel und Gretel and as Prinz Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, and at L’Opéra de Montréal in concert. She appeared with the MDR Sinfonieorchester as Haydn’s Berenice, and with the Royal Opera House Muscat in La Traviata.

During the pandemic, she had debuts cencelled with the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra & Maestro Vladimir Jurowski in Wagner’s Ring Cycle, with the Bochumer Symphoniker in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, and with the Academy of Ancient Music in J.C. Smith’s Paradise Lost. She also lost a planned debut at the Edinburgh Festival in Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied, and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Mo. Yannick Nezet-Seguin in Breaking the Waves, along with debuts at Boston Lyric Opera as Sesto in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, for the London Philharmonia Orchestra & Maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen singing Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied, and at the Royal Concertgebouw in recital.

Wallis is a 2013 graduate of both the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program & the Juilliard School’s Artist Diploma in Opera Studies, and a 2011 graduate of the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio. She is the grateful recipient of the 2016 Bernard Diamant Prize and several major grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the 2013 Novick Career Advancement Grant from The Juilliard School, the 2013 Sylva Gelber Music Foundation Career Development Award, and multiple prizes from the George London Foundation.